After its military, diplomatic and political failure in the Sahel, France wants to review its strategy. Paris would still have to take its past mistakes into account.
Has the Sahel become the Bermuda Triangle for Paris? Mired for years in this African region, France had posed as a savior, before being decried. In February 2013, President François Hollande launched Operation Serval. He was then received on the spot by applause and lived then “the most beautiful day of his political life”. The objective was then noble: to help Mali get rid of the jihadists.
But nine years later, the situation has changed a lot: Serval has become Barkhane, and the legality of the operation has often been called into question. Last January, the French ambassador to Mali was ordered to leave Bamako, as were the French soldiers. Emmanuel Macron, in disagreement with the military junta, announced the withdrawal of French soldiers.
Abolition of the Sahel task force
This Thursday, we also learn that the Sahel “task force”, created in January 2020, will be dissolved. Africa Intelligence writes that it will be “fully reintegrated into the Africa department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs”. A change of strategy which shows above all that Paris has failed in its mission.
First of all, the results are catastrophic: the security situation has not improved in the region. Worse, the Sahel continues to see this situation deteriorate. And this well before the announced departure of the French soldiers. Operation Barkhane would also have committed several blunders, some of which are documented in Minusma reports, straining relations between Paris and Bamako a little more.
The NGO Oxfam describes “a French strategy that has become a dead end”. The Sahel region has been a dead end for Paris, which has not only failed in its mission but also contributed to making itself look bad on the continent: "Whether in Mali, Burkina Faso or Niger, the people of the Sahel today express today there is strong mistrust of the policy pursued by France. This is explained in particular by a continuous deterioration of the security context which, from northern Mali ten years ago, has spread over the years to neighboring Niger and Burkina Faso. Today, Benin and Côte d'Ivoire are beginning to be affected in turn by attacks from various non-State armed groups, highlighting in the eyes of local populations the inability of Barkhane and his partners to end to the prevailing insecurity", sums up Oxfam.
"The acknowledgment of a failure of France is now widely shared"
Last July, France tried a last gamble, with the announced dispatch of its French Ministers of the Armed Forces and Foreign Affairs to Niger to, according to Mediapart, "try to convince their counterparts there that in the Sahel, France is now attentive to its military allies and respects the sovereignty of its African partners”. In other words, we blame Paris for much more than its inefficiency, and the Élysée knows it.
For Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, doctor in political science, “the failure was not only military in this respect. It also took on a moral and political dimension when putschists returned to power in Mali”. France has made itself the enemy of the military, and at the same time of a Malian people who were looking for a partner, more than a paternalistic or even neocolonialist figure.
The rest, we know it: the military coups were acclaimed by the street, from Mali to Burkina Faso. Paris also saw populations demonstrate against Operation Barkhane convoys in Niger and Burkina Faso.
“Paris policy in the Sahel has entered a strong zone of turbulence in recent months. The acknowledgment of France's failure is now widely shared after nearly 10 years of military operations which have not made it possible to respond to the Sahelian crises”, summarizes the NGO Oxfam.